Kenya RPCV Guy Consolmagno says the space within the human soul where religion and science overlap is inhabited by poetry and metaphor

Even the most calculating scientist entered the field through the doorway of a heart filled with passion for the work, whether he believes in a supreme creator. And that passion can lead right to the feet of Almighty God, Consolmagno said. "What gets you up in the morning and into the lab?” he asked. “Day to day, what motivates you? It’s love for what you’re doing, and wherever you find that love, you’ll find God. That’s where you’ll find your religion.” Guy Consolmagno is an an astronomer for the Vatican.

Guy Consolmagno speaks at Nucor Auditorium as part of the College’s Convocation series

By Wil Shane, Lyon College News Bureau Published Tuesday April 11, 2006

The deep and silent space within the human soul where religion and science overlap is inhabited by poetry and metaphor, and God is there waiting to share His secrets, an astronomer for the Vatican said Thursday at Lyon College.

Dr. Guy Consolmagno, Society of Jesus, of the Vatican Observatory, presented his lecture “Astronomy, God, and the Search for Elegance” in Nucor Auditorium as part of the College’s Convocation series.

“Science and religion overlap in one place,” he told the capacity crowd. “In the human being doing the science, believing in the religion.”

Consolmagno is an astronomer at the Vatican Observatory, and his research includes observing the colors of trans-Neptunian Objects at the Vatican Observatory’s Advanced Technology Telescope. He’s also president of the International Astronomical Union Commission 16, Planets and Satellites, and a member of the IAU Working Group on Defining a Planet. He also serves as curator of the Vatican Meteorite collection, one of the largest in the world. His research explores the connections between meteorites and asteroids, and the origin and evolution of small bodies in the solar system.

He also served as keynote speaker for the 90th meeting of the Arkansas Academy of Science, which ran April 7-8 at the Lyon campus in Batesville. He was born in Detroit and earned master’s and doctorate degrees from MIT before joining the Peace Corps in the mid-1980s. He spent two years in Kenya before joining the Jesuits in 1989.

Both science and religion require their practitioners to live by three articles of “faith,” Consolmagno said.

“First, you have to believe the universe exists, and that you’re not just a butterfly who thinks he’s a scientist,” he said. “And second, you have to assume there are laws to be discovered and that the universe makes sense.”

The third requirement is also the most important, he added.

“You must believe that science is worth doing,” Consolmagno said. “That’s the biggest question of all.”

One must be careful not to substitute science for religion, or vice versa.

“Textbooks go out of date,” he said. “But the Bible doesn’t. It’s a different kind of book.”

Even the most calculating scientist entered the field through the doorway of a heart filled with passion for the work, whether he believes in a supreme creator. And that passion can lead right to the feet of Almighty God, Consolmagno said.

“What gets you up in the morning and into the lab?” he asked. “Day to day, what motivates you? It’s love for what you’re doing, and wherever you find that love, you’ll find God. That’s where you’ll find your religion.”

Those overlaps within the human heart are why different scientists analyzing exactly the same data can come to vastly different conclusions.

“Scientists are human beings who make choices based on their own perspectives and experiences,” Consolmagno said. “All are accurate, and all are different. People bring different ideas to the equation.”

“When someone says something has been proven scientifically, all that’s been proven is that the person doesn’t know what science is,” he said. “There are big differences between information, understanding and wisdom.”

Scientific theories must do more than merely satisfy the data. They must do so in a way that is “elegant.”

For example, when Einstein once heard that a rival scientist had completed experiments that disproved much of his Theory of Relativity, the renowned genius simply said, “He must be wrong,” Consolmagno said.

“Einstein held his theory was true because it was so elegant, it fit together so well, that it had to be true,” he said.

Science is not “literal,” Consolmagno said. It’s “poetry and metaphor” for how the universe works.

“The same God who came to save you, an individual, created individual molecules, atoms and electrons,” Consolmagno said. “When I’m doing science, I’m playing with God.”

When this story was posted in April 2006, this was on the front page of PCOL:

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Story Source: Batesville Daily Guard

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Kenya; Vatican; Religion; Catholicism; Astronomy; Science

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